


educational hazards

by downn_in_flames



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, as usual i have no idea what i'm doing, i think this is a love square?, kind of?, this fic is a mess it's fine i'm fine just let it happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26755009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downn_in_flames/pseuds/downn_in_flames
Summary: Every student at Hogwarts High knew that you didn't talk about Miss Evans in Mr. Potter’s class, and vice versa.Nymphadora Tonks knew this too; she just didn’t particularly care.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 16
Kudos: 141





	educational hazards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crowsb4bros](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowsb4bros/gifts).



> happy jilytober here's some absolute nonsense for you that combines two of the tropes on paula's spicy trope list: "discord users who are friends online but want to kill each other at work" and "rival teachers being shipped by their students"

Every student at Hogwarts High knows that you don't talk about Miss Evans in Mr. Potter's class, and vice versa.

Nymphadora Tonks knew this too; she just didn't particularly care.

"Potter!"

He can always tell exactly who's just walked into his classroom when she addresses him like that. Every student addresses him as _Mr._ Potter, and every other colleague addresses him by his first name.

But Lily Evans, it seems, needs to stand out from everyone else.

Not that she needs help with that, given that her vivid red hair and tendency to draw everyone's attention every time she walks into a room both already serve that purpose, but she's always been the overachieving type anyways.

"Can I help you?" he asks, skipping over any pleasantries. He knows she just wants to get straight to the point anyways - there's no point in indulging her in small talk.

"You deviated from the lesson plan today."

In that tone, she makes it sound like he's slaughtered a puppy.

"Yeah, well, the kids wanted to have a discussion about the Ming Dynasty and I wasn't going to stop them from that," he replies, his tone bordering on nonchalance. He knows that'll get her riled up - his seeming lack of care about what she perceives to be a _very big deal_ \- and yet he does it anyway.

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, _please_. They were just trying to slow you down so that you'd get behind and have to cut part of the unit from the test - I heard Sarah say that herself."

"Well maybe that was _Sarah's_ strategy, but the rest of them seemed really into it."

He's fine with Evans getting annoyed that he hasn't followed plans to a tee, but the insinuation that he doesn't know what's going on in his own classroom is a bridge too far.

She crosses her arms in front of her chest, and makes a noise of displeasure. "When you mess up your own lesson plans, you mess up _mine_ , you know. I don't appreciate that."

"Oh trust me, I know."

He _absolutely_ knows, because every time he so much as makes the tiniest deviation from their pre-set lesson plans, for whatever reason, she comes into his classroom during their shared planning period with this same temper.

The point has already been belabored to death, and he's made it _abundantly_ clear that he has no intention of adjusting his teaching style to suit her rigid structures, so he's not sure why she even bothers at this point.

Hell, he's not even sure why _he_ bothers. He should really just lock his door during his planning period and let her angrily bang on the door for the entire 45-minute block. Wouldn't _that_ be a fun chance of pace.

"It _seems_ like you don't," she retorts, "because you keep doing it."

"And I'll continue to do so as I see fit," he replies, looking away from her and back at his laptop. "Our classes may be interconnected, but I'm not fundamentally altering my teaching style to fit yours."

"I - that's - you're infuriating," she declares, before turning on her heel and leaving the classroom.

He listens to her walk down the hall, heels clicking loudly as she goes. Once he's sure she's out of earshot, he sighs loudly, putting his head in his hands.

Lily Evans is somehow both the best and the worst thing to come out of taking a job as a History teacher at Hogwarts High School, and every time she opens those pretty red lips of hers, the duality of his feelings about her increases tenfold.

She's brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and gorgeous in a way that made his jaw actually drop when she first walked into his first All-Staff meeting (something Remus got a _kick_ out of), and yet, she's also found a way to be the most infuriating person he's ever met.

Really, would it _kill_ her to have a little flexibility every once in a while?

It hadn't been this much of a problem in years past, when the way she ran her English classes was of little interest to him and his History curriculum, but then the district had decided that World History and World Literature should be taught in tandem, the two lesson plans intertwining and playing off of one another, and Albus Dumbledore, as Principal of the school, apparently thought there no better pairing to launch this flagship curriculum than Mr. Potter and Miss Evans.

And oh, how wrong he'd been.

The entire planning process over the summer had resulted in more than one near-screaming match and, on one particularly notable occasion, an iced coffee in his lap.

(She _had_ apologised for that one; the dumping of a coffee on him wasn't so much an intentional act of anger as it was a particularly aggressive hand gesture gone wrong, but he's not inclined to completely dismiss it as pure accident either.)

The entire school knows that they're on… less-than-pleasant terms with one another - well, the entire school except Dumbledore, who is either completely oblivious to it all or has made the executive decision to just refuse to acknowledge the omnipresent tension between two of his top teachers. But everyone else - their coworkers and even the students - know that something of a rivalry exists between the two teachers.

Whatever the case is, Evans is out of his hair for now, and he's grateful for that.

* * *

**james-dean-daydream:** is that a taylor swift reference

**james-dean-daydream:** your username i mean

**james-dean-daydream:** (i'm from the great hall discord, i swear i'm not just some random creep popping into your discord DMs, i just saw the username pop up and had to ask)

**burning-red-in-my-head:** haha, yes it is

**burning-red-in-my-head:** oh yeah, i think i've seen your username pop up a few places as well

**james-dean-daydream:** always nice to meet another taylor swift lover

**james-dean-daydream:** and you're a teacher too, yeah?

**james-dean-daydream:** i mean, i assume so since you're in a discord chat for teachers, but idk we've gotten some weird randos on occasion

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i am a teacher

**burning-red-in-my-head:** not a weird rando

**james-dean-daydream:** good to know

**burning-red-in-my-head:** but anyways, while i've already got this message open, now seems like a good time to say that i saw your comment in that discussion about that whole disciplinary situation, and i thought it was really really good

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i wouldn't have thought to see it from that perspective

**james-dean-daydream:** thank you

**james-dean-daydream:** although really, i only had that insight because i've seen almost the exact same thing play out in person

**burning-red-in-my-head:** oh god, something like that happened in your own classroom?

**james-dean-daydream:** not exactly

**james-dean-daydream:** the kids i teach are a bit older than that

**james-dean-daydream:** it's more based on some experiences from when i was in school

**burning-red-in-my-head:** oh

**burning-red-in-my-head:** do you teach high school then?

**james-dean-daydream:** i do indeed

**burning-red-in-my-head:** same!

**james-dean-daydream:** it's a load of fun

**james-dean-daydream:** anyways, i've got to go help my roommate with dinner, but i'm thrilled to have found another swiftie amidst the teacher crowd

**james-dean-daydream:** i'm around if ever you want to scream about her new album

* * *

His and Lily's dynamic is so notorious across the whole school that the students have practically implemented an unspoken rule amongst themselves: you don't speak about Miss Evans in Mr. Potter's class, and vice versa.

At least, he _assumes_ this is a rule, because he's heard all too many conversations stutter to a halt around 'hey, did you do the homework for… uh, for… uh, World Lit?' or other such variations.

Teenagers tend to organise themselves around the strangest particular rules (sometimes at the expense of the _actual_ rules), and this seems to be one of them. He doesn't fault them for it most of the time - the rules he himself had with his friends when they were teenagers would put his students to shame, in all likelihood - but this one's particularly noteworthy for some reason.

As such, it's a rather surprising twist when one of said students decides to thwart that unspoken rule so brazenly.

"Make sure you've completed the chapter ten reading guide by Thursday at midnight," he instructs the class right as the bell rings. "Submit them through the online portal - or if that fails, email it to me directly."

All the students filter out of the room, and he returns to his desk, sinking into it and planning to take the seven-minute break between classes to remember what the hell he has planned for the ninth-graders coming into his classroom after this.

"Mr. Potter?"

He snaps his head up in the direction of the voice, and is greeted with the sight of electric pink hair.

Nymphadora Tonks - _just_ Tonks, as she very vehemently insisted on the first day of classes - is a notable student for a number of reasons, least of which is her proclivity to show up at school every few weeks with a new and totally different neon hair colour. She also lacks any sort of filter in the classroom, which has resulted in more than one very impassioned statement about some aspect of history that James, while more than slightly inclined to agree with, has had to tamp down for the sake of maintaining classroom order.

"Yes?" he asks, feeling oddly apprehensive about what she'll say next.

His gut proves correct, when she replies with, "Did you know Miss Evans broke up with her boyfriend?"

He nearly falls out of his chair at the mention of her name - purely because he's gotten so used to it being a taboo, and this… well, _this_ conversation is a _wild_ overstep of said taboo.

"I did not," he answers, trying his best to maintain a level tone of professionalism.

"I just figured you ought to know," she tells him, throwing her multicolored, pin-covered backpack onto one shoulder. "Now's your chance with her."

He's pretty sure his brain fully short-circuits right then - _surely_ his student didn't just say what he thought she just said.

He doesn't get a chance to confirm or deny whatever words he might've hallucinated, because Tonks disappears from the classroom in a flash of pink, and a few freshmen start to trickle into the room.

After a few moments, he comes to the conclusion that she _must_ have said that, because there's _no_ way his own brain could've conceived of something so preposterous. Evans annoys the shit out of him; he doesn't give a damn about when he might have a 'chance with her.'

Of course, there's the separate question of how the hell Tonks knows about her English teacher's relationship status, but somehow that's only secondary to the real question, which is: why the hell would she think James should care?

* * *

**burning-red-in-my-head:** hello i'm taking you up on aforementioned screaming

**burning-red-in-my-head:** none of friends are teachers so they're not done with work yet and i need someone to appreciate the beauty that is the lakes with me

**burning-red-in-my-head:** the lakes as in the song, if that wasn't clear

**burning-red-in-my-head:** not just some random lakes

**james-dean-daydream:** lol

**james-dean-daydream:** oddly enough, i did manage to piece that together

**james-dean-daydream:** but anyways, re: the lakes

**james-dean-daydream:** askdljgrha;jgha

**james-dean-daydream:** she's a genius?

**james-dean-daydream:** like we knew this already

**james-dean-daydream:** but like?

**burning-red-in-my-head:** I KNOW

**burning-red-in-my-head:** 'is it romantic how all my elegies eulogize me' is just

**burning-red-in-my-head:** like i know i'm an english teacher and i'm predisposed to lose it over good poetry, but like?

**burning-red-in-my-head:** the SONGWRITING

**burning-red-in-my-head:** is ART

**james-dean-daydream:** i fully plan on just listening to it on repeat for hours when i get home

**james-dean-daydream:** i'd be listening to it right now if i didn't think it would throw off my ability to mark quizzes

**burning-red-in-my-head:** just give them all an A so you can put your priorities straight

**burning-red-in-my-head:** (if you ever try to tell anyone i said that i will end you, i have a reputation to maintain)

**james-dean-daydream:** a reputation, hm?

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i'm pretty sure everyone i work with thinks i'm the strictest teacher at the school

**burning-red-in-my-head:** which is fine enough, but also… i'm not

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i expect a lot out of my students and i like structure, but idk, i don't think i'm as rigid as most people i work with think i am

**burning-red-in-my-head:** at least, not in the ways that it matters

**james-dean-daydream:** lol i think i have the opposite problem, so i can… sort of sympathize?

**james-dean-daydream:** just in a totally different way

**burning-red-in-my-head:** so what you're telling me is you're one of those ~cool teachers~

**james-dean-daydream:** idk, maybe?

**james-dean-daydream:** it's cool because it means i apparently have a knack for making kids interested in a subject they'd otherwise be super bored by

**burning-red-in-my-head:** ok so none of this actually sounds like a problem

**james-dean-daydream:** please tell that to a few of my colleagues

**burning-red-in-my-head:** your colleagues sound like they've got terrible judgment

**james-dean-daydream:** i'll pass that along to them

* * *

After that, he and Red (which is what he's taken to calling her in his thoughts, due to a lack of a name on her profile and James' own reticence to ask at this point) talk nearly every day about something or other, whether it be some story about their lives or teaching or some completely random niche topic that it turns out they both can go on for ages about.

He learns that she has two roommates who regularly get themselves into the wildest situations, which is not wholly unlike his own experience living with Sirius, Remus, and Peter in school. She loves cats but won't get one of her own for some reason, but she gets incredibly excited when he sends her pictures of his own giant orange cat, Godric. She hates pizza sauce. She only drinks coffee when she's hungover, and even then, it's only a very specific order from Dunkin.

It's almost strange how much he now knows about this person when he doesn't even know her real name. It's _actually_ strange how much more he wants to know.

When Sirius catches wind of the fact that he's been chatting with some unknown faceless woman on the internet for the past few weeks, he gives James endless shit for falling in love with a complete stranger purely because she has a Taylor Swift-inspired username.

James patently denies that he's 'in love,' because that would be absurd, but is it really so bad that he really enjoys talking to someone he's never met?

To that, Sirius rolls his eyes and declares that it's only a matter of time until James is booking a flight to meet his mystery Discord dream girl in person.

Of course, that's still somehow preferable to what's been happening at the school.

Evans storms into his classroom one afternoon, and he's confused by it for a moment because he's not even aware of anything he could've done to earn her ire this time, and then she holds up a crumpled piece of paper.

"I intercepted _this_ from a couple of the girls today, and do you want to know what it says?"

He's really not sure how some note-passing is _his_ responsibility, but he indulges her anyways. "Enlighten me."

She walks over to the desk and hands it to him, clearly unwilling to read it aloud herself. And once he gets to reading, he starts to understand why.

_N: Ok but tell me Mr. Potter and Ms. Evans wouldn't make an adorable teacher-couple_

_S: Don't they hate each other though?_

_N: Yeah, but that's the whole thing. It's like the ideal enemies to lovers situation. They think they hate each other but it turns out that they're actually perfect for each other and live happily ever after and have super cute babies that they bring to all the soccer games_

_S: I really think you've watched too many rom-coms_

_N: Erica back me up on this pls!_

_E: No you're right I can definitely see it_

_N: See?_

It takes him a second read for it to properly sink in.

"Is this… are our students shipping us?" he asks, not looking up at Lily just yet.

"Seems like it, and I'm at a total loss of _where_ the hell that came from," she replies.

"Nymphadora," James curses.

"What?"

"Tonks - I'm pretty sure she started it," he explains.

Lily cocks her head to the side, her hair falling over her shoulder as she does so. James isn't sure why that's as distracting to him as it is. "What do you mean?" she asks.

"She came up to me after class a few weeks ago to let me know you broke up with your boyfriend, which she seemed to believe was relevant information for me to have."

Her eyebrows shoot up at that. "And you didn't think to share that with me?"

James actually scoffs at what she's suggesting. "You're telling me that you would've done that? After having one of your students tell you that I'm single, the first thing you would've done with that information is shown up in my classroom to tell me about it?"

That actually gives her pause, and she weighs his words in her mind for a minute. "Okay, no, you're right, I probably wouldn't have."

She's… admitting he's right? That's a first.

"It _is_ kind of funny the more you think about it though," he eventually responds. "Like, just… where could they _possibly_ have gotten that idea from?"

Lily laughs at that - she doesn't laugh at the things that he says very often, but when she does, it always surprises him a little. She's got a nice laugh. "Seriously," she agrees. "It's like they don't even know us at all."

He runs his hand through his hair, probably messing it up even more than it already was in the process. "Yeah, really."

* * *

**burning-red-in-my-head:** have you ever simultaneously wanted to both punch someone AND make out with them?

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i'm sorry, i know that's a really weird question to be asking of a random person on the internet, but all of my real life friends would know exactly who i'm talking about and they CANNOT KNOW about part two of that question, so here i am, asking you instead

**james-dean-daydream:** weirdly enough i do think i know the feeling you're describing

**burning-red-in-my-head:** it's a coworker so in practice i really shouldn't do either for professionalism's sake

**burning-red-in-my-head:** but GOD he does my head in

**burning-red-in-my-head:** and in more ways than one and i hate that

**james-dean-daydream:** i feel like we've all got that one coworker

**burning-red-in-my-head:** ok see this is why i'm glad i came to you about this

**burning-red-in-my-head:** you're validating me

**burning-red-in-my-head:** notwithstanding the fact that they'd give me shit about who it is, most of my friends would also probably give me some shit about how 'no, actually, most normal people either like or dislike someone, they don't live their life balancing on a precarious tightrope between love and hate refusing to firmly settle on one side like that'

**james-dean-daydream:** well i admire your friends for their ability to properly work through their feelings

**james-dean-daydream:** that must be a nice life they lead

**james-dean-daydream:** but i know exactly where you're coming from

* * *

His feelings about Evans never quite so strongly veer towards the pure dislike side of the spectrum as they do on what will probably go down in history as one of his least favourite days of his teaching career.

The day starts off normally enough; his first period students spend far too long trying to get him to let them pick their own partners for their projects (and he eventually caves, because he still remembers how much he hated pre-assigned project partners) and his second period spends most of the class period taking a quiz. It's only after nearly everyone has turned their papers in that it all goes south.

He hears whispers at first, of a fight that's set to happen outside during lunch break. At first, he tries to tune it out; kids talk a lot of shit, and only a tiny percentage of it actually comes to fruition, but eventually he manages to overhear enough to convince him that something's actually going to go down.

As a result, he finds himself out in the courtyard during his class's lunch break; hopefully, whoever's involved in this whole mess will notice him and decide not to throw punches when there's an authority figure so close by.

(Not that that ever stopped him, he thinks wryly, but maybe kids these days have a better sense of self-preservation than he did at their age.)

He's got his eyes peeled for kids getting ready to create a scene; what he's not expecting, however, is a very clear shouting of some words that should _never_ be spoken aloud, much less on school property.

He crosses the courtyard with remarkable speed, and his brain goes on autopilot. He's not really fully _there_ for what happens next, and only really comes back to his senses properly as he's very firmly guiding four boys to Dumbledore's office.

When they reach the front desk, he turns to the four of them. Adam, Trevor, Luke, Harold - all boys he's coached or had in class and all boys he definitely never expected to be taking to Dumbledore for any sort of disciplinary reasons. "Sit," he demands, pointing at the wall of chairs adjacent to Emmeline Vance's desk.

The four boys follow his directions immediately, looking vaguely startled by their normally-laidback teacher's deadly serious demeanor. Three of the four are players on the soccer team - boys he coaches every single day - and he knows there's an extra level of fear there given how much they all look up to him.

He turns to Emmeline. "Is Dumbledore in?"

"Yes, he should've just gotten out of a meeting a few minutes ago," the school secretary confirms.

"Can you keep an eye on these four for a minute?"

"Of course," she answers politely, before looking over at the boys and cringing. She's probably looking at Harold, who's currently holding a tissue to his nose in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood from it.

He finds Dumbledore in his office, mindlessly poking at a few keys on his keyboard. He's quite sure the principal is currently playing chess on his computer.

"Albus, can I speak to you?" James asks, the hardness of his voice from earlier entirely gone. "I've got four boys in the front office that I just had to physically separate in a fight."

Dumbledore hums; he's been a principal at this school for almost twenty years, and is no stranger to the occasional high school fight.

James relays the full story - the slurs the smaller boy had been screaming, the fact that he's pretty sure he knows who threw the first punch, and the state he'd found all of them in by the time he could get to the scene. Dumbledore just nods through all of it, including James' suggestions for how Dumbledore should handle the situation. James isn't normally the type to care this much about disciplinary action - that's not his wheelhouse, and there's a reason he's got no aspirations to go into school administration anytime soon - but he feels such a strong connection to what unfolded today that he can't help but care _so much_.

At the end of his spiel, James is breathing hard, and he's pretty sure there's the faintest of smiles on Dumbledore's face.

"Thank you, Mr. Potter," the principal says, and James knows that's his cue to leave. He has no idea how much of his own tirade Dumbledore plans on taking to heart, but he's said his piece and that's all he can do at this point.

He gets back to his classroom before his next class is set to start and gets a solid ten minutes of free time to contemplate slamming his head against the concrete wall repeatedly, but ultimately, the bell rings and kids start appearing at their desks and he's able to go about things normally.

He hears whispers before he calls the room to order; his students always seem to think they're being quiet enough to not be overheard and they rarely actually _are._ Somehow, news of the fight - although fight isn't quite the right word and it's a bit more akin to three boys beating up another for spewing hate speech - has spread like wildfire, and all the students are looking for just a bit more information about what actually happened to the four of them.

James receives more than one sidelong glance from his students, who by now all probably know that _he_ was the one who intervened, and he has to pretend like he doesn't see it.

But for all the gossip at the start of it, the class itself goes relatively smoothly, and James makes it through everything he was meant to discuss today just in time for the class period to end.

His planning period is next, and he's honestly half-contemplating changing into the gym clothes he keeps in his desk and running laps around the track for a good part of it. He's not sure that would exactly fly with Dumbledore, but he'd really like _something_ to do with the weird mix of emotions swirling in his chest right now, egged on by the haunting memories of his own childhood.

Something about watching a situation so similar to one he'd played a role in hardly ten years ago has… put him on edge, somehow.

He doesn't even get the choice to go for a run, or even abandon his classroom in any sense, because there's a flash of red hair in his doorway and it's all James can do not to throw his head back and groan at her presence.

The look on her face suggests that whatever's about to come next isn't going to be good.

"You absolute - _god_ , I can't even use the words I want to right now because we're in a school building," Lily puts two fingers to each of her temples, taking a deep breath.

"As much as I love being berated for miniscule lesson plan deviations, I'm _really_ not in the mood right now, Evans," he tells her, not even bothering to mask the annoyance in his tone. He'll restrain himself from being a _complete_ dick, but he's not going to smile and take her shit today either.

"This is _not_ about a lesson plan deviation," she retorts, letting her hands fall back to her sides. Her eyes are burning now. "This is about you showing absolutely absurd levels of preference to your own soccer team boys."

She… she's _not_ going there right now. She can't be.

He doesn't even dignify her with a response, just looks up at her with an eyebrow raised, an unspoken message that she _really_ shouldn't keep talking.

"Adam, Luke, and Trevor ganged up on that poor kid, and you have the _audacity_ to tell Dumbledore that he shouldn't suspend them, and that Harold - the _victim_ of their bullying - should face the same punishment that the other three get?" She shakes her head. "I know you don't like to take most things seriously, but _by god_ , bullying should not be one of them, and you absolutely _shouldn't_ be picking sides just because the bullies are the popular athletes who are probably _just like you_ when you were a kid."

That last part is probably the only part of her tirade that's even close to reality, and it's a little too on-the-nose, although not for the reason she expects.

When he speaks, the strength of the anger in his voice surprises even himself. Whenever he and Lily are verbally sparring about something or another, he's never _actually_ upset. It's an annoyance at most, coupled with something almost akin to enjoyment. But right now? Right now, he's livid.

"Need I remind you, Evans, that only one of us was actually there this afternoon?"

She just blinks at him, clearly not prepared for him to match her fiery anger with pure ice.

"Or what about this - I made _recommendations_ to Dumbledore based on what I witnessed, but _I_ was not the one who actually doled out any punishments. Dumbledore is the one who followed through. And yet, oddly enough, you've chosen to come yell at _me_ and not him, because _I'm_ an easier target."

She finds her voice this time. "That's not - "

He cuts her off. "I'm not going to defend myself to you, but you _really_ need to get your facts straight before you come barging into my classroom like this," he replies, getting up from his desk.

And then he walks straight past her and out of the classroom, because he sure as hell has no intention of continuing this conversation.

* * *

**burning-red-in-my-head:** hey

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i know this is probably weird and random and maybe a bit too personal

**burning-red-in-my-head:** but when we first started talking you mentioned a bullying situation when you were in school that was similar to the one someone in the discord was asking for advice about

**burning-red-in-my-head:** if it's not too much to ask, could you tell me what happened?

**james-dean-daydream:** ugh sorry for taking 8 hours to respond, today was kinda rough

**james-dean-daydream:** but yeah, i don't mind talking about it

**james-dean-daydream:** first of all, it has to be acknowledged that i was a little shit as a kid

**james-dean-daydream:** i don't really have a great excuse for it, but… yeah. i did some things i'm not proud of as an adult, one of which was being a bit of a bully

**james-dean-daydream:** there were a few kids my friends and i… targeted, for lack of a better word

**james-dean-daydream:** they were massive bigots and were pretty vocal about it, and we had some weird fantasy that we were being some sort of vigilante heroes by putting them in their place

**james-dean-daydream:** one day, we cornered one of them and he just… kind of snapped. said some really, really awful things and i swear to god it's the first and only time in my life where i've physically seen red

**james-dean-daydream:** i definitely threw the first punch, but the next thing i knew, i was out of the whole mess and my best friend had him slammed against a wall and honest to god looked like he was about to kill him

**james-dean-daydream:** a teacher showed up at that point and broke it up

**james-dean-daydream:** and it looked… bad. it looked really, really, really fucking bad

**james-dean-daydream:** a few other kids were there and testified to what actually happened, but i really thought that was it for all of us - especially my best friend. they were talking about expelling him, and suspending the rest of us for the rest of the year.

**james-dean-daydream:** and then, all of a sudden, our principal called all of us into the office and explained that we were going to be in detention for the next year minimum, but she was giving all of us a second chance to get our shit together

**james-dean-daydream:** i think she had some faith in us that we didn't even have in ourselves, that we were capable of being better than what we were at that time

**james-dean-daydream:** and that second chance was everything we didn't know we needed

**james-dean-daydream:** so when that whole conversation was happening in the discord, it reminded me of that, and of my high school principal who knew from our intentions that we were capable of a hell of a lot more than our actions suggested

**james-dean-daydream:** idk, i just think we need more of that in the world

**james-dean-daydream:** kids are stupid and don't think things through, but a lot of times, their hearts are in the right place - if you can reach them in the right ways and help them see that there are better ways of doing things, it's just so much better than straight-up punishing them

**james-dean-daydream:** sorry that was a lot

**burning-red-in-my-head:** no, that was… thank you

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i really appreciate you telling me all of that

**james-dean-daydream:** have i officially destroyed whatever last semblance of a good reputation i might've had with you with that story

**burning-red-in-my-head:** no

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i was actually kind of right in the middle of saying the complete opposite thing

**burning-red-in-my-head:** obviously what happened was kind of shit, but i really respect how you grew from it and how it informs your outlook now

**james-dean-daydream:** oh

**james-dean-daydream:** well, thanks

**james-dean-daydream:** but yeah moral of the story, beating up a baby neo-nazi does not make them less of a neo-nazi as an adult

* * *

The next time Evans appears at his classroom door, it is with none of her usual forceful presence. She knocks on the door frame before coming in, cautious about not disturbing him while he's working in a way that she's never once been before.

"Can I come in?" she asks when he looks up from the paper he's marking.

"Uh, yeah," he replies, uncertain of what to do with this new dynamic. He's distinctly aware that something's shifted between them after the day of the fight last week, but he's not sure what that means just yet - thus far, she's just been avoiding him completely.

When she steps through the doorway, he notices that she's got a vase full of flowers in her hands, which is… weird, to say the least.

"Flowers? You really shouldn't have." His joke comes out dryer than anticipated.

"They're not for you," she replies. "Actually, they're… well, they're _from_ you. At least, they are according to this handwritten note that looks like it was written by a 16-year-old girl who dots all of her i's with hearts."

He hums. "Ah yeah, that sounds just like me."

The whiteboard next to them, covered in James' blocky scrawl that's just about the complete opposite of the handwriting Lily just described, serves to emphasise his sarcastic tone.

"That's what I figured," she responds, matching his sarcasm with some of her own.

"They're really getting into this thing, aren't they?"

"It seems so," she agrees.

There's a long silence that neither of them really know what to do with, and James is just about to break it to ask if she needs anything else from him, but she speaks first.

"I'm sorry."

Which is just about the last thing he expected her to say.

She must be able to read his confusion, because she immediately starts to elaborate. "I got mad at you for how you handled the fight last Thursday without knowing the full details - I jumped to conclusions, and I didn't realise that there was more to the story of what happened than what I'd been told. Dumbledore explained the whole thing to me when I asked about it, and… I didn't realise what had happened before the first punch."

He's so caught off guard by her apology that he doesn't know how to respond at first, just kind of stands there staring at her and the vase of tacky flowers she's still holding.

(Really, if he was going to buy her flowers, he would've picked a _much_ better bouquet than that. But he supposes teenagers aren't exactly connoisseurs of floral arrangements.)

She takes his silence as a bad sign, and starts to back out of the room. "So… yeah, that's all."

He finds his voice before she can get much farther. "Thank you," he says. "I really do appreciate the apology."

She grins wryly. "Yeah, well, it was very warranted. I tend to see the world in black and white a lot, and I sometimes forget there are, you know, shades of grey."

And weirdly, all of the tension between them starts to melt away. "Really? I hadn't noticed."

She rolls her eyes, but there's an unmistakable smile on her face.

"Yeah, it turns out that sometimes I can be 'rigid' and 'stubborn,' who knew?"

He feigns shock. "This is definitely news to me."

"Alright, no need to go _full_ sarcasm on me," she replies, but she doesn't seem to actually be all that bothered.

"Duly noted, I'll keep it at around seventy-five percent from now on."

There's a beat of silence between them.

"You know, honestly?" she says, examining the vase in her hands again, running her fingers over an almost-artificially-pink flower. "I knew these couldn't actually be from you before I even noticed the handwriting thing. You have _much_ better taste than this."

* * *

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i would like to announce that i have done something stupid

**james-dean-daydream:** how stupid are we talking

**james-dean-daydream:** on a scale of messed up an answer key to went out to a bar on a school night with your friends and let them talk you into multiple tequila shots

**burning-red-in-my-head:** that's a very specific scale

**james-dean-daydream:** they're both stupid things i've done in the past week

**james-dean-daydream:** so they felt like appropriate benchmarks

**burning-red-in-my-head:** so, backstory

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i have a tattoo on my left shoulder

**burning-red-in-my-head:** it is literally never visible in anything i wear to school

**burning-red-in-my-head:** except today, where i have stupidly worn a shirt where you can see like half of it and did not realise this until i was already at the school

**burning-red-in-my-head:** my administration doesn't give a shit about this stuff, but i already know my students and the rest of my department are going to give me hell

**james-dean-daydream:** oh no, your pristine uptight-teacher reputation will be ruined

**james-dean-daydream:** what ever will you do

**burning-red-in-my-head:** wow ok thanks for the support

**james-dean-daydream:** you're welcome :)

**james-dean-daydream:** also - what's the tattoo?

**burning-red-in-my-head:** it's very pretentious

**burning-red-in-my-head:** it's a quote from one of my favorite poems

**burning-red-in-my-head:** with flowers around it

**james-dean-daydream:** that sounds like the most english teacher tattoo imaginable

**burning-red-in-my-head:** yes yes i know, i am a walking stereotype

**james-dean-daydream:** ok but all things considered, more likely than not this will score you major cool-teacher points and no one will think any less of you

**burning-red-in-my-head:** i hope so

**james-dean-daydream:** and if they do, then we BOTH have colleagues with terrible judgment

**james-dean-daydream:** and i will fight them for you

**james-dean-daydream:** (i mean, i won't, because we've already established that that's not a thing i do anymore, but, you know, the sentiment is there)

* * *

Okay, so Sirius is absolutely right to give him shit at this point, because he is decidedly head over heels for someone whose face he has literally never seen and it's entirely ridiculous to be this attracted to a person who claims she's a 25-year-old high school teacher but has yet to actually provide any proof of that.

Of course, if she's _not_ actually a 25-year-old high school teacher, she's gone to some pretty elaborate efforts to establish a backstory.

The feelings are a bit inconvenient, because she's got that whole possibly-liking-a-colleague thing she mentioned a while back and still occasionally makes references to, and he's got no intention of acting on anything anyways. So instead, he just gets to stew on them.

And the problem with _stewing_ is that he just thinks. Way too much. And it turns into him trying to dream up a face to attach to all the messages he's received even though he knows he shouldn't do that.

What's worse is that the face he imagines looks a _lot_ like Lily Evans.

A significant part of that is almost definitely that he's somehow gotten it in his head that Red is also somehow a redhead, and somehow he has filled in the rest of the details with the most attractive redhead he can think of, who just so happens to be the teacher he gets in weekly spats with.

Although granted, a lot of their 'spats' have toned down recently, and weirdly enough, James finds that they're kind of fun sometimes, in a very twisted way that he absolutely does not have time to unpack. She's still fundamentally _so very annoying_ about some of the _dumbest shit_ , but… he doesn't know.

If he wasn't so busy being infatuated with some random woman he's been chatting with on Discord for months, he might have actually developed some sort of proper crush on her.

The school day is pretty uneventful - James has a quiz scheduled for nearly all of his classes, which means he has far too much downtime. He knows some teachers like these sorts of days, where they just get to sit at their desk and catch up on other things all day, but he's always been miserable at sitting still.

He's much more in his element walking around the front of a classroom, getting to put his seemingly endless amounts of nervous energy to use _somewhere_.

His last batch of students for the day starts to stream in.

"Okay no, I definitely didn't hallucinate that, right?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Miss Evans has a _tattoo_." The teenager says the word like it's dirty, like it's some huge scandalous discovery.

James' head snaps up at the mention of her - the taboo on Lily's name died not too long after a bunch of students simultaneously decided they were the plot of the next big rom-com - but he certainly wasn't expecting to hear it in _that_ context.

"No, you definitely didn't hallucinate that. I watched her try to cover it with her hair a couple times, but it was definitely there."

"Did you see what it was?"

"I dunno, it looked kind of… like flowers, I guess? And maybe some words?"

"That is _so_ cool though. And also hella unexpected."

" _Right!?_ "

James immediately thinks about messaging Red and telling her that he has _proof_ that he was right this morning, that the _exact same_ thing happened to a teacher at his school and the students seem to think _more_ of her because of it (and really, what are the odds of that?), and then it hits him.

Oh. _Oh._

… Fuck.

This is the first class all day where he's _grateful_ for the quiz he'd set, because he gets to spend the entire first twenty minutes of class scrolling through three months of Discord chat history, picking out little hints and clues that he'd completelymissed the first time through but are _glaringly_ obvious in hindsight.

Red is Lily. Lily is Red.

_Holy fuck_.

He's not even sure how the rest of class even happens, because his brain is really only halfway there and he's running on autopilot so it's fine but he just… his head is spinning.

The bell rings for the end of the school day, and he waits just long enough for the commotion in the halls to calm down - and not a second longer, because patience has never been a virtue of his - before making his way to the English department.

* * *

**james-dean-daydream:** so, question

**james-dean-daydream:** that coworker you said you couldn't decide if you wanted to punch or make out with

**james-dean-daydream:** is he a history teacher, by any chance?

**burning-red-in-my-head:** um… yes

**burning-red-in-my-head:** how did you guess that?

* * *

James steps into the doorway of her classroom, so that he can just see her bent over her computer screen, brow a bit furrowed in something between confusion and concentration.

"Your choice, Evans."

She looks up at him, wide-eyed, and it takes her a moment to catch on. "You - you're - "

"I mean really, _I_ was the one with my actual name in my username, I feel like you were definitely in a better situation to figure this one out sooner."

It takes another few moments for her to work through her shock, but eventually, her eyes narrow. "How long have you known?"

"Only about half an hour longer than you," he answers, sounding way more casual about it now than he was at the time of revelation. "Truly, I only properly pieced it together because I overheard a couple kids talking about how cool Ms. Evans's tattoo was, and that was just a little too much of a coincidence, and so I started scrolling back through all of our messages, and… it all started to make sense."

"I - that's - I - " Words seem to fail her entirely, which is rather out-of-character for an English teacher who usually never knows when to _stop_ talking. Eventually, she settles on something entirely out of left field. "You listen to Taylor Swift?"

"Have you never noticed that the music playing in my classroom at all times are instrumentals of her albums?"

"I, um, am not usually paying attention to the background music, to be quite honest," she answers, looking a little sheepish.

"Well… yeah. That's a thing."

It's weird, looking at her now, and realising she knows infinitely more about him than he's ever actually told her to her face, that he's bared so much of his soul to her without even knowing it, and that she's done the exact same.

He supposes it's fitting, now, that whenever he imagined Red before, she always looked a bit like Lily. The universe, telling him something he didn't know yet, in its own twisted way.

She's looking at him too, in the same deep, calculating sort of way, like she's _also_ trying to rectify the reality that two different people in her head are actually just the one.

And then, suddenly, she drops her head onto her desk. "I can't believe I shit-talked _about_ you, _to_ you."

He actually laughs at that. "If it's any consolation, when I told you I knew the feeling well… I was _also_ shit-talking you to you."

She picks her head back up from her desk, and scrutinises him for a moment. "So… what do we do now? What are we supposed to do with this?"

James thinks about it for a moment, ruffling his hair like he always does when he's a bit nervous about something. "Here's an idea. You, me, dinner on Saturday. At the end of the night, you can make an executive decision and either give me a solid punch to the face while not on school grounds that you won't face any professional consequences for, or… _well_."

* * *

They do go for dinner on Saturday, and she does opt for the ' _well._ '

They make it all of three weeks before a high schooler spots them together at the park.

And naturally, the entirety of Hogwarts High knows by 9 a.m. on Monday.


End file.
